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Tuesday, June 05, 2012

Wildlife

Inspired by Tim’s educational Aigronne Valley Wildlife blog,
here’s a slice of the wildlife that we share our bit of Brittany with.
First up, a recording made back in March this year of male and female
Tawny owls calling to
each other. (Photo of tawny owl by Nigel Blake)

The classic “twit-twoo” is, in fact, an impression of two
tawny owls calling to each other. The female calls “ke-wick” (the ‘twit’) and the male responds

"hoo-hoo-oo-oo-oo". When you hear "ke-wick hoo-hoo-oooo" you are
listening to a pair of tawnys. Both
can be heard in my recording.
(More detail on the calls)

Buying plants for our (then new) wildlife pond, Gabrielle saw plenty of frogs in and around
the plant containers. She joked
to the owner, “can I have that one please as it seems as if it comes with a free frog?” Marie
Mad laughed and said she was welcome to catch some if she could and gave her a
jar. Gabrielle installed five
tadpoles into our nascent watery ecosystem—the pond is the endpoint of our grey
water treatment system—and we hoped for the best.

We’d also introduced some roach and were then
concerned that they were eating some of the other wildlife, decimating our
population of diving beetles and having a go at some of the smaller newts. We thought of cane toads and Australia; had we done the right thing?

The plant life has since expanded greatly, increasing places
for smaller beasts to hide, and the pond seems to be in a healthy
equilibrium. We did see the odd
green frog last year and then this year we heard them … and there’s a lot more
than five! Whether these have
anything to do with Gabrielle’s five tadpoles or they have made their way to
our pond independently, they seem very happy. This recording (click on 'video' above) was made late one evening, from our bedroom
window.

This isn’t one of our own honeybees (see previous blog) but rather
one of the many species of bumblebees.
Looking at its colouring and the hairy back leg,
my best guess is that this is a Red-tailed cuckoo bumblebee Bombus rupestris. Please post a comment if you can
confirm this or otherwise tell me what it is.

Last up on this nature trail of a blog is a walk in our woods having prepared ourselves by going through a French book on soil
indicator plants (click to download as a pdf)
translating the names into English and then went for a stroll to see what we
could find. Gabrielle’s a lot
better than I at plant identification but even she found some
plants new to her despite the fact that we've walked through these woods many times. I’d never even
heard of the yellow archangel Lamiastrum
galeobdolon before but we found one and it suggests a fertile, moist soil
that is only lightly acid or neutral in pH. It is also known as an ancient woodland indicator species.